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Re: THEORY: Th- words (was: RE: THEORY: Question: Bound Morphemes)

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Sunday, July 4, 1999, 17:21
Raymond A. Brown scripsit:

> So, no, one would expect only [T] initially.
Good point.
> The odd thing is that initial > [D] survived at all. It's, as Lars & others have said, that in unstressed > positions the initial sound tended to be devoiced.
You mean voiced, I suppose.
> Initially AFAIK the only pair of words differentiated by the two > sounds is {thy} /Dai/ and {thigh} /Tai/ - unless one counts the engineers > abbreviation 'thou' /Tau/ = thou[santh of an inch] as a word.
Even finally, minimal pairs are rare: "sooth" and "soothe" is the only one I can think of offhand. -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin